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Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Kitchen Reno: Demolition!

I have two distinct feelings whenever we're in the demo phase of a project:

Excitement at taking out something we don't like/anticipation of the good stuff to come

Panic at completely destroying something that was otherwise "functional"

Yeah, I have those feelings about my trashed kitchen. I am excited about what's to come. I have been reviewing our plans and imagining what will go into each cabinet and drawer...but I am not looking forward to the next 6+ weeks with no dishwasher, sink, or kitchen cabinets. We bought this house way back in 2007, the kitchen has been on the to-do list that whole time. And now we're doing it and there is no going back.

So on to demo - we are going for a total gut job. Depending on your plans for your renovation, you may not need to go all the way down to studs, but for us it seemed to make the most sense.

It just seemed like with these 3 big things, it might be best to just get the plaster out, do the work we want to do, then put fresh drywall up.

The demo was done over 2 weekends. And here's a few things we learned:

We should have covered the washer/dryer in the basement because they got FILTHY

Termite damage in our home was NOT limited to the front of the house (structure was ok, just furring strips need to be replaced).

Previous owners adopted the "layer it on" method for flooring. There were no fewer than FOUR layers of flooring, plus luan. So 8 million nails. Yeah.

Here's a few pics of how things went...

The Beginning:

The End:

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It's pretty exciting to have this clean slate. And we're not completely done with demo - the drywall on the ceiling is coming down because we are moving the lights a bit. But we're mostly ready to move forward. It's pretty awesome.